[hellohowareu]

a course on a topic does not dictate what policies in a society should or should not subscribe to.

Given that scientific discourse and outcomes fluctuate, we can assume the same is true social science.

Furthermore, social science is much more dependent on current fashionable political trends. This can be seen in the example of the American Psychological Association accepting recent political topics such as "toxic masculinity" [1] as new definitions in psychological phenomena.

Check out this PhD's work to show how usage of bombastic identity politics terminology increased in mainstream journalism in a non-organic way. It seems driven by top-down institution-based entryism. [2] & [3]

[1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner

[2] "Many trends develop over decades but I’ve never seen change so rapid as the breathtaking success of what one might call social justice concerns. Beginning around 2010-2014 there appears to have been a inflection point. Here from Zach Goldberg on twitter are various words drawn from Lexis-Nexis." https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th...

[3] "1/n Spent some time on LexisNexis over the weekend. Depending on your political orientation, what follows will either disturb or encourage you. But regardless of political orientation, I'm sure we can all say 'holy f*** s**'"

https://twitter.com/ZachG932/status/1133440945201061888

[tadfisher]

Are you allowing for the possibility that you may be incorrect, as in, these ideas are not new, are based on empirically-derived data, and their application results in positive outcomes?

From [1]:

> "Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly."

[hellohowareu]

I'm afraid I can't give any credence to a politically divisive & politically-fashionable concept as "toxic masculinity". Especially if "toxic femininity" isn't commonly referenced in the same context-- because without it, a concept targeting only masculinity is biased in my view.

Masculinity kept humanity alive in the face of various dangerous precipices facing a group of social animals seeking to survive during the course of their evolution.

Just because it has become recently politically fashionable to discount it, does not mean it is harmful.

Nor do I believe any absolute-ist interpretation that boys suppress emotions, or that society forces them to suppress emotions. It varies across time & space-- relative to culture, which fluctuates.

To make a blanket statement on the concept is just plain silly, in my view. Human emotions, cultures, and societies are not static.

Therefore any sort of claim by any institution that their <some number> of years of study results in <some outcome> which speaks for <some absolute phenomena> in my opinion, again, is just plain silly.

And it attempts to gatekeep healthy masculinity-- again, pure silliness which demonstrates the nanny mentality of those who attempt such gatekeeping.

[tadfisher]

> Especially if "toxic femininity" isn't commonly referenced in the same context- because without it, a concept targeting only masculinity is biased in my view.

Why is that? To me, it seems like you're saying masculinity diametrically opposes femininity.

> Just because it has become recently politically fashionable to discount it, does not mean it is harmful.

I agree that masculinity in itself is not harmful. I believe you are conflating the specific term "toxic masculinity" with masculinity in general, though. I also believe that there are toxic aspects to masculinity that absolutely cause harm in many facets of life; for example, educational barriers, suicide rate, mental illness, and incarceration are all much higher in the male population. I don't think that these are aspects of masculinity that one must accept hand-in-hand with the benefits (earnings potential, proportion of leadership positions, etc). I would call these aspects of masculinity toxic.

> To make a blanket statement on the concept is just plain silly, in my view. Human emotions, cultures, and societies are not static.

To the extreme, this means nothing concrete can be said about human emotions, culture, and societies. I know you don't believe that.

But you raise an interesting possibility; did the modern notion of masculinity always exist? If, say, a past society (or modern, non-Western culture) achieved lower suicide rates in teenage boys, would it not be worth studying how those societies treated masculinity?

> Therefore any sort of claim by any institution that their <some number> of years of study results in <some outcome> which speaks for <some absolute phenomena> in my opinion, again, is just plain silly.

Would it help to point out that these studies have scientific methodologies; for example, they measure different treatment outcomes among a large and diverse enough population such that a statistical conclusion can be made?

> And it attempts to gatekeep healthy masculinity- again, pure silliness which demonstrates the nanny mentality of those who attempt such gatekeeping.

That's certainly a take I didn't get from reading the publication. The APA doesn't seem to be under the delusion that they can control how masculinity is viewed in society, anyway. To me, they have identified evidentiary harms caused to society as a whole through the negative conditioning of boys, given that conditioning a name that you disagree with, and have measured successful results by directly addressing that conditioning in psychological assessments. I am struggling to see a downside here.

[remarkEon]

> Would it help to point out that these studies have scientific methodologies; for example, they measure different treatment outcomes among a large and diverse enough population such that a statistical conclusion can be made?

What statistical conclusion is being made here? How does one quantify what is “toxic masculinity” and what isn’t?

[hellohowareu]

" The APA doesn't seem to be under the delusion that they can control how masculinity is viewed in society, anyway."

The APA-- the professional org. which represents the field of psychology in the USA--[1] literally instituted a definition of "toxic masculinity".

If that isn't an attempt to control masculinity in society, I don't know what is.

[1] "APA is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States, with more than 133,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students as its members." https://www.apa.org/about